While compared with the high horsepower cars of the late 1960s or today's modern muscle these muscle offerings from 1985 might seem a little tame, they were the most impressive performers that had rolled out of Detroit in sometime.

This vintage Motorweek test matched the fox body Mustang with two different flavors of third gen F-body—the 5 speed carbureted Trans Am and the fuel injected automatic IROC Camaro—to make fun of the ongoing muscle car wars and simultaneously welcome back performance to the muscle car world.

Sure the Mustang's 14.3 second 1/4 mile doesn't seem like much today but at the time it was a quick indication the malaise era was over. There wasn't a clear winner because as the testers aptly put it "Cars are like beer—it's all a matter of taste"

With this in mind, even with the automatic and the slowest straight line performance the "sophisticated" IROC is our pick of the three.